Personal views on the MCWB program

Sharing experiences is one of the best ways to multiply and improve your insights. My experience as a Global Fellow supported by OAK Foundation during the 2013 summer at the Duke Marine Laboratory was a great sharing experience. I had the opportunity to meet several people with high diversity backgrounds, what was very valuable for me. My time and interest was dedicated to course activities, and I could not find enough time on sharing personal experiences with other fellows. I felt I needed more time for this.

When the Mini Grants in Marine Conservation funding opportunity popped up we realized that we could expand our Duke experience planning an exchange program. All of us were very excited with the approval of the program, now we have more time to share our experiences. We built a very strong connection between the global fellows. Although the intense web contacts, meet in person was totally different. We could go deep in our conversations and impressions. The days spent together were a great opportunity to exchange ideas, solve difficulties and make plans. We raised at each other the enthusiasm to dedicate our lives to environmental conservancy. Some of us have just started the professional career and sometimes working on conservation makes you feel it is the most difficult work in the world. We shared good and successfully experiences, and I believe it reinforced our compromise with an environmental career. All the credit goes to this exchange program.

I definitely believe that the Exchange Program "Marine Conservation Without Borders" was a great success achieving important outcomes, promoting mutually benefit for the program team and local people involved in the activities.